The Senior Managing Director (SMD), Innovation Lead will help establish, design, and execute a world-class Innovation Lab that fuels learning for Teach For America’s 51 regions and keeps the organization on the vanguard of educational innovation. In this role, you will help build tools, resources, experiences, and experiments that accelerate the regions’ ability to drive systems change in their communities. You will be charged with helping to develop strategy for the Lab and working in close partnership with the selected regions on their localized approach – subsequently aligning systems and structures to ensure deep, actionable learning for participants. This will require the Innovation Lead to understand impact, analyze data, synthesize insights, make meaning for internal and external audiences, and iterate quickly on redesigns.
The ideal candidate:
- Has experience designing powerful, meaningful learning experiences for adults
- Spikes in strategic thinking, including the ability to take big ideas and make them concrete
- Is naturally a doer, less interested in pontificating than in diving into creation
- Possesses an orientation towards and experience in creating systems that drive continuous improvement;
- Is voraciously curious, constantly drawing upon learning and methodologies from various sectors and experiences
- Thrives in ambiguity and
- Is grounded in and pursuing equity, diversity, and inclusion while constantly interrogating dynamics of power and privilege within themselves and pushing others to do the same at the micro and macro levels in an endeavor to uproot and dismantle oppression
This is a unique opportunity for a creative, visionary, and strategic leader to help Teach For America live into its aspiration as a learning, network-driven organization. You will report to the Senior Vice President, Regional Field Executive and collaborate closely with regional Executive Directors and leadership team members, the Org-Wide Learning and Strategy team, and other internal stakeholders.
- Drive development of the Innovation Lab’s strategy and work with senior leaders across the organization to shape, evolve, and implement a vision for innovative, systems-change leadership
- Design resources and learning experiences aligned to the Lab’s vision, including a kick-off for the Lab’s first participants in early 2019
- Partner deeply with the Executive Director and Regional Innovation Lead from the Lab’s participating regions to create, evaluate, and iterate upon pilots aimed to develop more corps members and alumni to make breakthroughs in real problems of practice
- Build systems and protocols to evaluate learning and impact, ensuring participants are better equipped to effect systems change in their communities
- Act as a catalyst and facilitator in the identification, evaluation, and sharing of innovative solutions that improve organizational performance and foster collective learning
- Ensure that organizational learning and accompanying systems, tools, and processes that drive creative thinking are both strongly informed by and strongly inform our strategic priorities and fundamental strategic questions
- Represent TFA in key forums, including presentations to TFA’s Management Team and at external conferences, on topics related to innovation, adult learning, etc.
- Maintain awareness of research and best practices in fields of program evaluation, program design, and adult learning, among others
- Participate in staff-wide responsibilities, such as the selection of prospective corps members
- 8-10 years of exceptional performance in strategy, research, design, program evaluation, consulting, or similar roles
- Experience at schools sites and/or teacher development/coaching preferred
- Deeply committed to Teach For America’s core values, mission, and theory of change
- Skills
- Ability to build and maintain strong relationships with leaders across an organization and operate with cultural competence, integrity, maturity, and confidence
- Possesses the highest standards of discretion, ethics, integrity, respect, and humility
- Ability to drive cross-functional change by working collaboratively in dynamic organizational environments
- Distinctive skill in understanding complex organizational problems, disaggregating and analyzing them, and synthesizing the resulting learnings into actionable recommendations
- Has exemplary verbal and written communication skills, including an ability to communicate ideas to others clearly, simply, and compellingly
- Strong self-awareness and ability to independently self-reflect
- Work Demands
- Works with colleagues across the country leveraging remote technologies (e.g. phone, video conference)
- Ability to travel to in-person meetings in various U.S. cities (less than 25% of time)
- Willingness to work some weekends and evenings